Alistair Darling: Talking of alliances, I noticed that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) was on the same platform as the Greens and the Scottish Socialists, who want to shut down the North sea completely—as well as capitalism. He has been building an odd pro-business alliance, and as I said, he keeps making the wrong calls. I agree with my hon. Friend. I see no need to reopen the Scotland Act and it is not the Government's intention to do so.

Alistair Darling: I am aware that there have been problems in relation to the supply of gas through the interconnector and, as the Chancellor said in his pre-Budget report last year, the Government are making representations to the European Commission because we believe that, for our market to work properly, it needs to be liberalised. It must be possible for people to buy and sell gas across different countries, and for it to be supplied. As I said earlier, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Minister for Energy are pursuing a variety of measures which, I believe, will increase the supply of oil available to us not just this year, but in the future.

People-Trafficking

Nicholas Winterton: The Modernisation Committee of the House of Commons has existed and operated in this House for eight years. Although it is only appointed until the end of the present Parliament, it has become a permanent fixture of the House, whether we like it or not. Is not it wrong that a major Select Committee that can influence the way in which the House operates should not have a representative on the Liaison Committee, which is the Committee of all the Chairmen of the Select Committees of this House? Will the Minister review the issue as a matter of urgency and fairness?

Nigel Griffiths: A number of organisations, including the Procedure Committee, have looked into this matter. The Hansard Society examined it under Lord Rippon and concluded:
	"We see the greatest difficulty in empowering the House or its committees to amend the text of instruments . . . and all the advantages of greater flexibility of delegated legislation would be lost."
	It is that flexibility that we do not wish to lose and neither do we wish the statutory instrument procedure to become yet another series of Whipped votes on issues, which I fear it would undoubtedly become.

Theresa May: I am interested to hear the Minister's comment that statutory instrument procedure should not become a matter of Whipped votes, which, of course, they are when a vote is taken in the Committee considering a particular instrument. Given the number of legislative measures that are enacted not through a Bill but through secondary legislation and given that statutory instruments are debated for a maximum of only one and a half hours under the negative procedure, does not the Minister believe that the time has come for better scrutiny of the statutory instruments and regulations that the Government use as a secondary means of introducing legislation?

Anne McIntosh: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I briefly gave notice yesterday of this point of order, which relates to the answer given to a question from me by the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears). It appeared in Hansard on 29 November and on 8 December, she wrote to me to point out that it was inaccurate—through, I am sure, no fault of hers—in two substantive respects. She then wrote to me to correct the two inaccuracies and has confirmed that a copy of the letter has been placed in the Library. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the inaccurate answer remains on the record in Hansard. May I ask you to use your good offices to ensure that the record is reprinted with the full text of the amended written answer, including the corrections to those two inaccuracies?

David Burrowes: The Government refer to the fact that they are focusing funds. Is not it the case that although the Bill seeks to make further savings of £35 million in respect of the lower courts, the Legal Services Commission has already accepted that those costs are under control? Indeed, the Department for Constitutional Affairs has predicted that they are on the decrease. One respects the fact that legal aid costs in general have increased, but the budgets of lower courts are under control so should not the true target for cost-cutting be high-cost cases?

Bridget Prentice: The hon. Gentleman may have been in the Chamber during Constitutional Affairs questions, in which case he would have heard me say that we are targeting high-cost cases. The Bill tries to ensure that we have a much fairer system in both the lower and higher courts. The Bill will also cover the Crown Court.
	There are two key enabling powers: first, the power to grant representation is to be transferred from the courts to the Legal Services Commission and, secondly, a test of financial eligibility is to be reintroduced. Clauses 1 and 2 confer those powers by amending schedule 3 to the Access to Justice Act 1999. Clause 3 creates a power to require defendants to make contributions towards the cost of their legal aid, which will be a central component of the Crown Court scheme. Clause 4 makes consequential amendments to other legislation.
	The scheme to be developed through those powers will consist of three distinct elements: transfer of the power to grant; means-testing in the magistrates court; and means-testing in the Crown Court.

Bridget Prentice: I can only reiterate that it is part of the law of our country that we comply with the Human Rights Act, and we are ensuring that the Bill does so. I am happy to have signed up to the Act according to those provisions—[Interruption.] I am informed that all Ministers taking Bills through the House sign according to the same provisions in the Act. There is nothing unusual about the Bill in that respect.
	I want to explain some of the things that the Bill will not do. I must emphasise that it will not affect the existing interests of justice test, which will remain an important feature of the legal aid system and all applicants will need to satisfy it. The test allows for several factors to be taken into account; for instance, whether the applicant is likely to lose his liberty, when determining if it is in the interests of justice for legal aid to be granted.
	It is an inescapable fact, however, that as matters stand, every Member of the House would qualify for legal aid provided they passed the interests of justice test. I doubt that I need to remind Members about the unfortunate stream of well-publicised cases in which apparently wealthy individuals are able to claim legal aid under the current scheme. Few would disagree that such a perverse system needs to be tackled and that is precisely what the Bill sets out to do.

Bridget Prentice: I hope that the pay dispute does not result in industrial action and that there will be an opportunity before the time at which that action is supposed to take place for all parties to come together to find a constructive solution. I am well aware of the situation that magistrates courts' staff face.
	Magistrates courts' staff presently do the administration for the scheme, and their jobs will be enhanced by giving them responsibility. They perform their roles under judicial supervision at the moment. It is important for us to say to them, "Here is an administrative job that you are doing very well, and we want you to continue to do so."

Jonathan Djanogly: I thank the Minister for explaining that all legislation requires a regulatory impact assessment, which I shall discuss later in my speech.
	The press briefing that the Government published in May at the time of the Queen's Speech estimated that the Bill would lead to annual savings of more than £35 million. We sincerely hope that it will, but it would be useful to hear more about how the Government reached that conclusion. After all, the original justifications for abolishing means-testing back in 1999 were that the system was too bureaucratic, which led to delays in cases being brought to trial and added significantly higher costs, and that it applied to less than 1 per cent. of applicants. It would be interesting for the House to hear how the Labour party, which abolished means-testing as a cost-saving measure, is going to reintroduce means-testing as a cost-saving measure.
	In its response to the draft Bill in 2004, the Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded:
	"We do not think these proposals have been properly costed. The Department has produced no convincing evidence demonstrating that reintroducing means testing would result in substantial cost savings".
	We support the Bill in principle, but we want to see more convincing evidence that it will have the desired effect. Will the Minister provide more detail on the projected savings?
	We want to address several other issues in Committee. For instance, concern remains about the perverse incentive for defendants to choose the Crown court in cases that may be tried either way in order to ensure a more favourable position on legal aid. That serves only to increase costs, and the matter requires further review. We are still concerned about a related aspect of the Bill, which seeks to translate the magistrates court regime in a modified form to the Crown court simply by delegated legislation. We are of the opinion that separate regimes should be introduced simultaneously for magistrates courts and for Crown courts through primary legislation to avoid uncertainty in the drafting of the regulations and the perverse incentives that I have just mentioned. We believe that those points outweigh the benefits of first appraising the magistrates court scheme.
	Despite our welcoming the Bill in principle, it is a very small step towards the desperately needed reform of the legal aid system, which the Government have allowed to fall into disrepair, and much more remains to be done. The Minister's speech was short on detail on the Bill's impact—for instance, what percentage of the population will have their access to legal aid restricted by the Bill? That is why I want to address some of the broader legal issues.
	The soaring cost of legal aid in England and Wales forms the background to the Bill and this debate. The problem is not new, and I concede that it is not exclusive to the current Administration, because Governments of both parties have grappled with the cost of legal aid over the past three decades or more. It is clear that the problem has become acute since this Government entered office: in 1997, the total legal aid budget stood at around £1.5 billion; this year, it is more than £2 billion, which is an increase of some 35 per cent. since this Government have been in office.
	More than half of that £2 billion is spent on criminal legal aid, the cost of which has risen dramatically. Since 2000–01, there has been a significant rise in the cost to the criminal defence service of criminal legal representation in the magistrates courts. By contrast, spending on civil legal aid, excluding the cost of asylum, has fallen in real terms by 24 per cent. since 1997. That in turn has forced many high street solicitors to go the wall, restricting access to justice for many of the most vulnerable in our society. For example, as I found out through a written question earlier this year, the number of high street solicitor firms offering representation for legal aid and family cases has decreased by more than one third in the past five years.
	That is despite the Government's ambition, as set out in the 1997 manifesto, to reform legal aid and achieve value for money for the taxpayer and the consumer. Meanwhile, at this year's election the Government promised to reform legal aid to better help the vulnerable. Their predicament seems to have led to a state of paralysis, and regrettably the vulnerable are being hit the hardest due to their inability to access lawyers who take on legal aid cases.
	We agree that the growth in spending on the criminal defence service has to be checked. In the words of Lord Justice Judge in his evidence to the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which reported on the draft Criminal Defence Service Bill in 2004, and to which the whole House is indebted for its work in this area,
	"we simply cannot work on the basis . . . that there is a tree at the bottom of the garden full of ten pound notes. There is not, and therefore there has to be some control exercised."
	As the Magistrates Association put it,
	"there is a large and continued increase in the amount of money spent on legal aid, and we accept that the amount available is not infinite."
	We agree.
	The fundamental legal aid review was announced by the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) in May 2004. On 19 July this year, I made a request to the Department of Constitutional Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in relation to the review. The relevant DCA press release stated that the review would be
	"a far-reaching study into the underlying legal aid system, which will focus on how best to provide legal help to those who need it in the longer term."
	Some of its conclusions were set out in the July 2005 paper, "A fairer deal for legal aid", but the Minister decided on the basis of public interest to withhold the detailed responses and conclusions contained in an internal report. I called for an internal review of that decision, which resulted in certain limited material being made available. Nevertheless, the contents of the internal report remain elusive. That is entirely unsatisfactory, and one has to query why such information is being withheld. It seems only to add further weight to the concern that the legal aid system is in a state of crisis. The fact that fewer than two fifths of the population now qualify for legal aid sits rather uncomfortably with the concept that everyone is entitled to access to justice so that they can enforce and defend their legal rights and so that the Government and other powerful bodies can be held to account or contested where necessary.
	The ridiculous extremes of bureaucracy involved in the legal aid process must continue to be broken down, and where savings measures are introduced, the savings must be real. The Government give in to the ever-present pressure to come up with short-term reforms designed to control the budget, but what is needed is a long-term strategy, particularly to reduce the amount spent on high-cost cases. The following figures represent the crux of the problem, which the Government are not adequately addressing. The half dozen most expensive criminal legal aid cases in 2003 amounted to no less than 25 per cent. of the total criminal legal aid budget. One per cent. of the highest cost cases amounted to between 40 and 50 per cent. of the total criminal legal aid budget.
	The problem is not that the Government are spending too little money but that cases need to be managed more efficiently. There needs to be clarity about what legal aid is spent on. The Crown Prosecution Service needs to manage cases more effectively, as do judges. Dealing with the management issues at an early stage will help to avoid even bigger problems and spiralling costs later on. Yet the Government seem utterly unable to get to grips with the problem, which is not new.

Jonathan Djanogly: I shall not give way.
	I repeat that the Government appear unable to get to grips with the problem. It represents a significant failure on the part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. It must know that the reintroduction of means-testing will not solve the problem or make significant savings in relative terms.
	The Law Society said in its submission to the fundamental legal aid review of January this year that early skilled diagnosis would have the most benefit in controlling the budget and prevent straightforward issues from becoming more significant and therefore a greater burden. It recommended the early identification of problems, and access by clients to appropriate services through a single point of entry offering legal aid services at different levels, or planned referrals. That will enable firms and advice agencies that already exist to take on extra rolls and expand their business. Does the Under-Secretary agree that that is a sensible way forward? If so, will she assure us that something will be done to implement it?
	Work needs to be done on proposals for competitive price tendering. If such proposals are to succeed, we cannot have a system that runs a high risk of being no more than a cost-cutting exercise, which will inevitably reduce access to justice and the quality of advice and representation that is available to legally aided clients. Given the range of quality accredited suppliers already in existence, where is the justification for jeopardising quality purely to save costs? Representations have been made to us that small, often ethnic, inner-city firms will have to close shop because of the proposals. The high street criminal practice could become almost defunct.
	The graduated fee scheme could have the perverse effect of encouraging barristers to drag out cases so that the longer they last, the more money they receive. It is also worth pointing out that, although civil and criminal legal aid constitute different pots, the Government appear to want to examine the whole. Losing control of criminal legal aid budgets has meant a collapse in civil legal aid, excluding asylum, by 24 per cent. in real terms since 1997 as criminal expenditure has risen by 37 per cent. We need imaginative solutions to achieve a sustainable legal aid system and an application of basic management skills to criminal case management.
	Another concern is the falling number of solicitors who choose criminal law defence work as a career. Work needs to be done to increase participation. The number of solicitors' offices that provide criminal defence services has fallen by 25 per cent. from 3,500 in April 2001 to 2,651 in September this year. Legal aid practitioners should be of a high quality and receive proper compensation. In a survey that the Law Society conducted, 50 per cent. of trainee solicitors said that, all things being equal, they were likely to pursue a career in legal aid work. However, the practical reality is that only 8 per cent. said that they were indeed likely to pursue a career in legal aid. Financial uncertainty is a particular problem for young barristers, who have not even the guarantee of a meagre salary.
	Given that legal aid rates have not increased for approximately eight years, the idea of attaching the tag of "fat cat" to the average criminal lawyer is perverse. Indeed, the problem is so bad that criminal practitioners tell me that very few wish to practise criminal law. Of those who do, many want to become prosecutors, who get a decent salary.
	Perhaps the Under-Secretary could describe the pilots for state defenders. I understand that they are even more expensive than private defence solicitors. Firms also need some predictability in their businesses. Many face immense pressure as they try to deal with new proposals and the complexities of the current system in a hostile environment.
	In relation specifically to criminal law, the increased complexity of the law as well as trial length must be taken into account, as the Bar Council has argued that those are the central drivers in increasing costs. It has cited annual criminal justice Bills and other legislation, which, over the past decade, have produced major changes in almost every area of legal practice and procedure. Two important examples are the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
	Changes to sentencing guidelines and the increase in the number of offences that carry a prison sentence are further factors. In cases in which imprisonment is the likely consequence of a conviction, the interests of justice test in assessing entitlement to legal aid is more likely to be satisfied, causing more frequent grants of rights to representation. Imprisonment is increasing; indeed, the prison population today stands at about 77,000, an increase of 28 per cent. since 1997.
	The effects of the Government's overall criminal justice policy must also be taken into account. For example, targets to increase arrest rates and the creation of a vast number of new criminal offences are contributory factors. That point was made by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) in her very worthwhile comments in a recent Westminster Hall debate. Surely the message is that, if we are going to charge more people, send more people to Crown Court trials and lock more people up, the costs of processing the accused—including legal aid costs—will rise.
	Criminal solicitors are threatening to close up shop and criminal barristers have gone on strike, yet the Government seem unable to see that we need provisions to address the legal aid problems that are handicapping some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society. What is needed is not simply to restrict the number of people being helped by the legal aid system, as the Bill proposes, but what was proposed in the Government's own report, "A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid", which was published in July this year. That is, a legal aid system that will be
	"fair and effective, providing access to justice for all who need it".
	Why can the Government not respond to their own message? If the Minister thinks that we, or the legal profession, will accept the Bill as the answer to the legal aid crisis, she will have to think again.

Vera Baird: If the hon. Gentleman reads his speech he will realise that he said that magistrates are on strike, which is utter rubbish, and that the Bar is on strike, which is utter rubbish—strike action was threatened for a very few days but it was accepted that Lord Carter of Coles understood their interests. The hon. Gentleman misrepresented that. He also blamed the Government for the way in which those at the Bar are paid. It was a lot of rubbish and it was quite unnecessary. I do not know why he cannot focus on the issues, which are that the Bill will promote some savings but a good deal more fairness. He ought, like his colleagues in the other place, to welcome and try to include it.
	The Bill provides a reasonably simple formula, which, in magistrates courts, where costs are quite low, will exclude from legal aid those whose income is above a particular level. The hon. Gentleman did not appear to have digested the fact that there is a separate system for the Crown court, which is now in a supplement to the framework document. That different model will allow for the much higher costs in a Crown court, with a barrier over which one cannot get legal aid and a barrier under which one gets it whatever, with those in the middle being dealt with through a refined and fairly reasonable, on the face of it, basis of means-testing. That comes with the important proviso, on which everyone should be able to focus, that someone who is acquitted, all other things being equal, should be entitled to a defence costs order. That is also subject to the proviso that there must be an interests of justice override where the sheer mathematics are such that the interests of justice are not represented in giving a grant of representation.
	There is also the issue of fairness—fairness to us all because we all pay in the end, and legal aid must be well organised, and also an element of fairness in the establishment of equivalence with civil legal aid. There have always been contributions on a means-tested basis for the purpose of civil legal aid, but that has not always applied to criminal legal aid, which seems slightly odd. The theory may be that because criminal defendants have no option but to be in that position, they should not be required to contribute, but defendants in civil cases often have no option either. It is odd that both groups have not always been subject to means-testing.
	The other important aspect of fairness is clear: no one who needs representation should not be given it. I am very pleased that in the House of Lords everyone coalesced around the interests-of-justice test, and that it is to stay.
	The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) levelled a criticism at the change of heart, but I do not think that it should have been a criticism. The idea behind the scrapping of the means test was pretty simple. The costs in magistrates courts are very low. The state probably pays less if it bears them than if it must engage people to calculate a means test on a very complex basis in order to recover a small amount at a rate of perhaps a pound or two a week. That must have seemed a very reasonable position to take. Moreover, there was a huge increase in legal aid certificates that could not be rationally be linked to the changes, almost as if there had been carte blanche for everyone to receive a certificate. That has led to anomalies. No one could possibly cheer when well-paid footballers receive legal aid for antisocial behaviour without making a contribution, and there is clearly a need for change.

David Heath: It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. and learned Lady. As is also very often the case, I agree with a great part of what she said. In particular, I agree that we should not be ashamed of legal aid; rather, we should rejoice in it. I am one of the few non-lawyers—either practising or non-practising—who is contributing to this evening's debate, but I want to make it absolutely plain that legal aid is unequivocally one of the most important pillars of the welfare state. It is as important in its way as provisions for education, health or social security, because allowing people access to justice is the mark of civilised society—and that means ensuring that they are properly represented if they find themselves before a court of law.
	Our debate has encompassed the whole of legal aid rather than the specifics of the Bill on Second Reading—I think that that is entirely appropriate in the present circumstances. It is important that we say how important both the criminal and civil legal aid systems are. It is right to acknowledge how the criminal legal aid budget has unfortunately squeezed the civil legal aid budget to an unacceptable degree. We should recognise the Government's difficulties in controlling the budget. Of course we recognise that dealing with it presents a problem for them, but it is not unreasonable also to say that we do not entirely agree with the way in which they have addressed the problem, notwithstanding what is contained in the Bill.
	What I have found particularly distressing about Government propaganda recently is the constant concentration on so-called fat-cat lawyers to the exclusion of those who provide day-to-day services throughout the country to people who truly need the support of a solicitor or junior barrister in the courts. The more the attention of the press, the media and the public is drawn to a very small number of QCs operating at the Old Bailey or elsewhere to the exclusion of the rest of the profession, the more we do a disservice to the totality of the profession and the legal aid that is provided. It is a diversionary tactic that is intended to provide a hate figure for more easily led colleagues. They say, "We have got to do something about these very rich lawyers," without recognising that there is a very thin dividing line between reducing the excesses of some and reducing the effectiveness of the whole.

David Heath: The hon. Gentleman is right and I will deal with that point in a moment. We rightly always draw attention to the most vulnerable and the least financially able to make a point, but this issue affects a much wider swathe of individuals. It is a truism to say that nobody—and certainly not the articulate middle classes—thinks about legal aid until they themselves are in a court and have no access to a solicitor at the point of need. One of the difficulties in arguing the case for legal aid effectively is perhaps that so many people assume that they will never be in that position until they are. Then they realise just how important its provision is.
	Much has been made of the idea that fees to lawyers are a substantial part of the problem, but in fact the evidence suggests the reverse. Remuneration for the large bulk of those providing legal aid is not excessive by any means and fees have been frozen for some time. The legal aid budget has risen inexorably simply because of the volume of business being pushed through, which is largely the result of the huge number of prosecutable offences that have been put on to the statute book. I do not know the precise figure, but the last time that I looked, this Government had created some 700 new offences. I suspect that the figure is now approaching 800. The legal aid impact test is now being applied to new legislation, but it is 800 offences too late: the damage has already been done.
	New offences are included in Bills with monotonous regularity; sometimes, they are included before the offences that they are replacing have even been implemented. That provides work for lawyers but is of no advantage to anybody else. We must ask ourselves what the consequences are of such an approach. One way to reduce the legal aid budget is to have a sensible prosecuting policy and not to prosecute such absurd offences as reading out a list of names by the Cenotaph. In the first instance, we need sensible laws and offences that do not unnecessarily restrict free speech.
	The attempt to get other Departments to share the legal aid costs associated with the offences that they put on the statute book is laudable, but I shall believe it when I see it happen. I fear that the Department for Constitutional Affairs does not have the clout within Government and the Cabinet to make this idea work. It could have worked, had my and others' proposal come to fruition to replace the DCA with a full-blown ministry of justice that takes significant powers from the Home Office. If we had that big player in government, perhaps more account might be taken of this idea. When I see the Home Office divesting itself of a significant part of its budget and handing it over to the DCA to pay for the consequences of the offences that it has put on to the statute book in this year's criminal justice legislation, this year's asylum and immigration legislation or this year's anti-terrorism legislation, perhaps I will believe it. Until that happens, I fear that this is a fruitless endeavour.
	We have also heard about the management of cases, but that cannot be swept aside as irrelevant, as it is critical to the amount of costs incurred. If we managed prosecutions better, we could manage defence cases better. At present, the evidence is that the management of cases, and of high-cost cases in particular, is lamentably poor in many instances, with the result that costs are higher.
	The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) mentioned early intervention. Although he was speaking more about civil cases than criminal ones, I agree that early intervention can prevent matters going to court that otherwise would have to and that the effect is to reduce costs overall.
	I shall give some examples of how not to deal with the expanding legal aid budget. First, we must be very careful about the thresholds that are applied. I pay tribute to the Government for having listened to the Liberal Democrats' departmental committee on this subject, and to the views of my noble Friends in another place. The system that has emerged has a built-in sensitivity that might not have been expected. A steep or sharp threshold would mean that there was a point at which a person's income would suddenly require him or her to pay the full costs of defence, even though that person had not had to pay anything before that point was reached. That would be inappropriate, whereas the tapering that is in place is entirely appropriate. However, the test is whether people are denied access to justice by their means, and that is a test that we cannot yet apply.
	The second way not to deal with the matter is to reduce the service that lawyers can provide to clients. An example of that is evident in the immigration service, where the whole thrust of previous immigration legislation has been to cut costs by reducing what lawyers can do for their clients. The effect has been to drive good practitioners out, and to allow poorer practitioners to be the sole defence resource for those who need it.
	We must also be careful about reducing fees. The Government have chosen a very arbitrary way to reduce fees, especially for junior counsel, but the number of people practising at the Bar and as solicitors is falling. It is very difficult to find legal aid solicitors in large parts of the country and, if we are not careful, the result will be that some places will become advice deserts. Often, the most deprived areas are not the worst affected: perversely, people in the most affluent areas are less likely to have legal aid practitioners. It is probably the worst thing of all to be poor in an affluent area, as such people have no access to services that they have a right to expect.
	The House needs to be aware of how few practitioners there are in the less affluent and rural parts of Britain. As I have said many times, my town of Frome has a magistrates court but only one practitioner in one practice providing criminal legal aid. He can do so because he is cross-subsidised by the rest of the practice, but his colleagues' patience about that cross-subsidy may not last forever. It is often reported that Frome magistrates court will close and that it will move to a new location 35 miles away. If that happens, I am sure that the patience of the other partners in the practice will be exhausted, as they will not want their colleague to be out of the office all day, every day, on visits to faraway magistrates courts. The result will be that there will be no one to represent people who require criminal legal aid in the magistrates courts in my area.
	That is a huge concern. It is bad enough to have only one practitioner, given the obvious potential for a conflict of interest to arise. For example, the practitioner in Frome often represents interesting young gentlemen—I shall not say "thugs"—and in their defence makes a familiar speech, telling the court about the extraordinary behaviour that a break-up with a girlfriend occasioned, and about the remorse that the young gentleman in question has expressed. However, that might coincide with his client having a fight with another young gentleman, whose story is suspiciously similar. That could involve a conflict of interests. If we do not have such practitioners, how will we provide the service?
	I am dubious about having a public defender service as a matter of course, which seems to me to be the direction in which we are inexorably headed. If that happened, the state would investigate the crime, mount the prosecution, try the crime and defend the defendant. I am not sure that that is how criminal justice should work in this country, and we need to be cautious about reaching that situation.

David Heath: I am glad for the defendant, but the CCRC needs to look carefully at its independence if it considered more favourably a request from a particular source than one from an equally valid but alternative source.
	Much has been said about the Carter review and what it will achieve. If it achieves everything that is expected of it, it will be a remarkable review indeed. I have some expectation that something will emerge from it. I have a jaundiced view of Government reviews as a rule, because it is this Government's way of saying manana to establish a review, or a review of a review, or a review of a review of a review. In this instance, however, as the issue is urgent something is likely to emerge. I hope that it is not scuppered, like the Turner review, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer before it is even published. That would be extremely unhelpful.
	I fear that an increase of costs will be involved, so there is a real prospect of that happening but I hope that the DCA will be able, and want, to stand up for itself and say that legal aid and legal services can never be provided on the cheap. They must be effective, but there will always be a cost, and to return to the point with which I began, in response to the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird, we should be proud of the fact that we provide those services to our citizens.
	We shall support the Bill. There is nothing exceptionable in it. I am deeply disappointed that the Minister wants to revisit the issue of appeal, as the sensible amendment proposed by my noble Friend, Lord Goodhart, in the other place commended itself to Members there. The Minister says that the eligibility rules are simply a matter of arithmetic. I disagree. There is of course a large element that is arithmetic and it would be nonsense to require it to be appealed, but there is also the complex issue of whether, in a relationship or partnership, another person's financial position and arrangements should be taken into account as part of the eligibility criteria. That is properly a matter for appeal.
	The previous appeal system was not overused and I do not think the proposed one would be. There would be no significant issues in terms of either costs or delay. At the end of the day, we are talking about the interests of justice. If someone is denied representation who feels that they should have it, it is per se in the interests of justice that we look into why it has been refused, if it is anything other than an incontrovertible case based on simple arithmetic.

Jeremy Wright: I do not propose to detain the House for long. I declare an interest as a non-practising criminal barrister and as a distinctly thin cat, rather than a fat cat, in the course of my practice. I have two concerns about the Bill. First, it does not perhaps address in the way that the Government hope it will the fundamental problem at the heart of the criminal legal aid budget. Secondly, in trying to address the problem in that way, the danger is that the Bill will damage the criminal justice system.
	Following the remarks that have been made by other hon. Members on the first issue, I have two points to make. First, within the parameters of my experience as a practising criminal barrister, I can think of very few of my clients who would be caught by the scope of the Bill and who would have to pay any contribution to their own legal costs because their incomes would come below—in many cases, well below—the limit that the Government propose. I therefore wonder whether a sizeable percentage of those who were my clients would save us any money at all if they were invited to contribute a proportion of their own costs.
	The other issue, which goes to the heart of the matter, and to which other hon. Members have drawn attention, is that the Government do not address in the Bill the very high-cost criminal cases that form a significant part of an unacceptably ever-growing criminal legal aid budget. Until something is done about those cases, the budget will not be brought under control. In fact, I suggest that the situation is worse than that: the danger is that those who practise at the junior end of the criminal Bar get the blame and must carry the burden of those who cause the real problem at the top end of the criminal Bar. That problem is not addressed by the Bill, which, if anything, perpetuates the myth that lawyers and, indeed, their clients in the criminal justice system are mainly responsible for the overspend. In my view, they are not.
	Whether the criminal justice system operates at too high a cost is a genuine concern—it very clearly does—but the reason why it does so is not mainly, substantially and certainly not entirely due to the fact that criminal legal aid is paid in too high amounts to lawyers and their clients. Many other things in the criminal justice system need to be addressed, such as why cases do not come to court as quickly as they should and why there are innumerable adjournments. That has to do with a range of things—the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) referred to a few of them—including failure to disclose evidence in time and problems relating to witnesses and defendants who fail to attend courts. There are even problems, I am sorry to say, relating to defendants not being produced on time from the prisons where they are on remand. That causes delay, and delay causes cost. If the Government chose to do an analysis of costs, I would not be surprised if they discovered that a good portion of the overspend that they correctly describe in the criminal justice legal aid system results from that sort of problem.
	The other difficulty that I have with the Bill is the fact that in the course of attempting to save money, the Government may do damage to the pursuit of criminal justice. It is inevitable that some people who do not receive criminal legal aid because their means are too excessive will choose to represent themselves. The Government have accepted that that will happen in a small number of cases, but I venture to suggest that it might happen in a substantial number of cases. In my experience as a lawyer, when that happens a case inevitably takes longer, and when a case takes longer, it costs more. When the Government calculate the amount that they hope to save through the Bill, they must take account of the lack of saving—if I may put it that way—that will result if more people choose to represent themselves.
	The problem that arises when people represent themselves is not only monetary. It is of course right that such people, as non-trained lawyers, might not be able to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as a legal representative could. Cross-examination also goes on longer. However, in a substantial number of cases, it is profoundly undesirable that those who represent themselves should be permitted to cross-examine witnesses. One can think of several examples of such cases, including neighbour disputes and, worse yet, cases involving a child as a victim or a witness. If prosecutions are conducted in such a way that defendants represent themselves and thus cross-examine witnesses, the process not only takes longer, but detracts from the nature of justice and affects the tone of the case.
	Although I do not object to the substance of the Bill, it fails to address the concerns that I have cited. I hope that the Minister will carefully examine not only what the Bill covers, but what it does not cover. As the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) said, when we deal with criminal defendants, we are often dealing with vulnerable individuals in their most vulnerable moments. It is important that they receive the assistance that they need so that they are represented properly. If they become inclined to defend and represent themselves, as I suspect that they will be in some cases, it will not enhance the nature of British justice—quite the reverse. I hope that the Minister will take my points on board and bear them in mind when she thinks about other matters that the Government might wish to address when considering the criminal justice system as a whole.

David Burrowes: I am grateful for the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright). I wish to follow on from his experiences at the Bar with my experience—I declare an interest—as a practising criminal solicitor-advocate.
	The titles of Government Bills have tended to be more descriptive in recent times. For example, we recently considered the Violent Crime Reduction Bill. Perhaps a more descriptive title of this Bill would be the "Return of means-testing following our mistake in abolishing it Bill". The Government must have the humility to acknowledge that the will to abolish means-testing was theirs. They have realised that they made a mistake, so they are trying to reintroduce it.
	I was a practising solicitor at the time at which we had the means-testing application forms. We all realised the administrative burdens and the problems and delays that the system caused. However, the problem was not means-testing per se, but the way in which it was administered. I remember the delays vividly. When clients applied for legal aid—as it was called before the representation orders came into being—they were not necessarily the most reliable of sorts. They were required to provide documentary evidence, but they were often self-employed. It took a great deal of time for their statements of accounts to come before the courts, or to get the wage slips for 13 weeks that were needed. There were weekly adjournments, and we went through the process of trying to get blood out of a stone to get the next wage slip to get up to the magic mark of 13 so that we could eventually reach a position at which legal aid could be considered. We certainly knew that the system needed to be changed to take account of those delays and problems.
	Another problem arose due to contribution orders. Clients were often required to make a contribution of a matter of pounds a week, but failed to do so over several weeks. Just before the trial—indeed, in some cases, it was on the day of the trial itself—an order would be issued to revoke their legal aid order because they had not paid their contribution. The trial process ended, and we went back to square one. That must change, and I urge the Government to be cautious about the implementation of the new contribution orders so that we do not return to the bad old days when contribution orders were a spanner in the works for the trial process and the criminal justice system. There is certainly support for a much more simplified, straightforward form of means-testing. It should be less bureaucratic and burdensome, so I welcome the proposals in the Bill.
	I am concerned about the rationale of the proposal to transfer responsibilities for granting representation orders from the courts to the Legal Services Commission. I am not aware of any justification for that proposal, and while I welcome the devolution of powers in the Bill to court staff—notionally, there will not be any changes in administration—the fundamental principle that the courts are the proper place for the judicial function of considering the merits of legal aid should be retained. The hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) referred to complaints about inconsistency after the means-testing scheme was abolished, and spoke about a flood of applications. She sought to criticise the courts for their inconsistency in granting certificates, and suggested that their decisions were wrong. I have not seen any research or statistics to justify such an assertion. From a practitioner's point of view, as soon as the means test was abolished it opened the way for problems for people charged, for example, with driving offences, who could not produce their payslips or a statement of accounts, and thus could not receive a legal aid certificate. Those people now fall within the range for the granting of legal aid which, in the past, was often granted to people who had the means to pay for representation. The number of certificates increased, but that had little to do with a more liberal approach by the courts towards the granting of certificates. In my years of practice, I did not encounter any inconsistency in the granting of certificates by the courts, so that argument does not provide a proper rationale for seeking to transfer the primary responsibility for granting legal aid from the courts to the Legal Services Commission.
	Recently, however, concerns were expressed when the commission became much more involved in the budgets of individual courts. Court staff were anxious about the targets they had to meet, and the decisions that were made were arbitrary, and not in the interests of justice. Inconsistencies, unfairness and injustice arise when the commission is involved in decision making, so it is worrying that the Bill should confer powers on it. I accept that those powers will be devolved to the court staff, but the Bill refers to monitoring by the commission, apparently to deal with the problem of inconsistency. Courts should have a proper residual power to grant legal aid. There is no such provision in the Bill, but it was mentioned in the other place, where Members were anxious about human rights compliance and the need for proper safeguards. In Committee, the Government should accept that the appeal process for legal aid should comply with human rights provisions. Moreover, they should go a step further and retain the principle of residual power for courts to grant legal aid.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) spoke about the prospect of defendants charged with either-way offences electing to plead in such a manner that means they will not be encumbered by contribution orders. I have represented clients who have been primarily concerned with the financial consequences of legal aid, and they have thus elected to plead in a certain way. At present, they must submit a statement of means, so they run the risk of contributing to defence costs. The reverse could well be true if we stagger, as we seek to do, the implementation of means-testing by magistrates courts and Crown courts. In either-way cases, many defendants will base their decision about whether to be tried in a magistrates court or in a Crown court on the issue of which court is less expensive for them. Plainly, there needs to be some reconciliation between the two procedures. We need to avoid the eventuality that I described, which could well increase the costs.
	Finally, I wish to talk up the role of the criminal solicitor.

David Davies: I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I join my hon. Friends in giving a cautious welcome to the Bill, with certain caveats. I am not a lawyer, but one does not need one when reading through the Bill to realise that it represents is a giant U-turn on the Act that the Government passed in 1999.
	The Minister said the old system was decrepit and in need of change, in which case one must ask why she, or rather her colleagues, did not change the system. What they did was tear it up and start again. The Government insisted that means-testing would have to be abolished. They were warned at the time that abolition would mean an exponential growth in claims and legal aid bills, but they dismissed that on the basis that the extra claims would be more than offset by the increase in efficiency as a result of dispensing with the service for the calculation of contributions.
	Legal aid spending has increased by 34 per cent. since 1997. The Government's figures suggest that the increase in costs is because people who would previously have paid for legal aid are taking advantage of the fact that they can now get it—the example involving a professional footballer who earns £40,000 a week is simply the tip of the iceberg. [Interruption.] I would be happy to take an intervention by the hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham).
	The Government introduced the 1999 Act in the face of warnings, and they made an error that cost millions of pounds and that possibly denied people access to justice. However, we must not be too hard on them, because any creditable system of justice should give a little credit to an offender who admits to having made an error and who wants to put that error right. Although we have not heard an apology from the Minister yet—perhaps we will get one shortly—the Bill is a way to make amends and reverse the errors introduced by the Labour party, and it will therefore receive cross-party support.

David Davies: I have not read the Hansard, but I have read a number of reports, which make it clear that warnings were given to Ministers that the cost of legal aid would increase. It is for Ministers, not the Opposition, to take such decisions, and today they have admitted that they took the wrong decision. All I want is for them to accept that they took the wrong decision.
	The Government have said that money will be saved, and they have discussed the figure of £35 million. I shall echo the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) and ask about the form in which we will see those savings. Will legal aid bills reduce by £35 million, or will the money simply be spent in different ways, in which case the legal aid bill may continue to rise?
	To pick up on a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), how will the Government police the mechanism for ensuring that people do not submit incorrect information when they claim legal aid? My hon. Friend has discussed the possibility of hiding funds in offshore costs, and it would also be easy for people to take out their savings, which is the asset that will be examined, to pay off the capital on their house or to buy a new car. What steps, if any, will be taken to police the mechanism and ensure that people provide accurate information? The Minister keeps saying that the Government will come up with an efficient system, but one cannot help but wonder whether the Government's definition of efficiency simply entails accepting on trust applications made by people who are already in the courts having been charged with other offences.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) rightly drew attention to the point that one reason why legal aid bills are increasing is that the Government keep creating ever more offences. He discussed the example of a young lady who was arrested simply for reading out the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq. I do not suppose that that young lady is a paid-up member of her local Conservative association, but I fully support her right to speak out. Apart from the increase in legal aid bills, I find it extraordinary that such cases are being brought. The Government are going to try to be tough on legal aid spending, but they are not going to be tough on the causes of legal aid spending.
	The Government could dramatically reduce costs in one or two other areas. Returning to asylum and immigration cases, more than £200 million was spent on legal aid for such cases in the financial year 2003–04. All hon. Members believe that genuine asylum seekers should be given all possible help in order to stay in this country. As the Government's figures show, however, the vast majority of those who claim asylum are making false claims and are not genuine asylum seekers. It is unacceptable that £200 million is being spent in this way, thereby funding legal advice to people who are making bogus claims. I know that all Members, many of whom are lawyers, are honourable, in and out of the House. However, I am concerned about the immigration and asylum lawyers who are, frankly, filling their boots with taxpayers' cash by launching one appeal after another in cases that are demonstrably hopeless. I suggest that the Minister should consider how legal aid for asylum and immigration is funded and even explore the possibility of withdrawing legal aid from people whose claims will clearly be false because they come from countries where there should be no danger to their lives.
	The Government should examine the way in which sentences are imposed. One of the reasons why legal aid bills are so high is that we have a system whereby offenders are able to keep reappearing on various offences because they have never been sentenced properly in the first place. If people were given adequate prison sentences, they, first, would not be free to go around breaking the law and causing more misery to members of the public, and secondly, would not be causing a rise in legal aid spending by reappearing in court and making the British taxpayer responsible for their defence.
	It is utterly perverse that those who are in prison are able to claim legal aid in order to get out on early release. There was much self-congratulation in the establishment a few weeks ago when the murderers of Anthony Walker were given the supposedly draconian sentence of two life sentences—a double life tariff. But if one reads the small print, it is clear that those two murderers will be out walking the streets within 15 to 20 years. By the time one of them is aged 35, he will be able to go before an early release board with legal aid in order to get himself out of prison again. That is outrageous. If such people were given the sentences that they deserved, they would never walk the streets again, and they would certainly not get legal aid in order to qualify them to do so.
	The Minister has a long way to go before she solves the problem of rising legal aid. She said that she is going to come up with a new system that will be simpler, more cost-effective and more efficient. Those phrases were all used a few years ago when the Access to Justice Act 1999 was introduced. I was not here in 1999—if I had been, I would be suffering from a case of déjà vu—but I would not be at all surprised if in five years' time we were not back here again having found that legal aid costs have once again soared and that the whole system is falling apart, with the difference that I fully expect that by that time those of sitting us on the Opposition side will be sitting on the Government side, and we will have a Home Secretary who will be able to put in place a proper system that will last us for many years to come.

Nick Ainger: Nice try. However, it is clear from the debates in 1999 that the issue was not perceived as controversial. The abolition was accepted for the reasons that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs gave. There were clearly serious problems, which the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) identified, in that the processes involved in the means test added significant delays to the justice system. A judgment was made at the time that abolishing it was a way of saving money, but more important, of speeding up access to justice. Hon. Members should be careful and, instead of crowing, accept that, at the time, the measure was perceived as a step in the right direction. However, our experience in the past four years or so and the various individual cases that have clearly abused the system show that something has to be done.
	The hon. Member for Huntingdon mentioned certain other factors that drive the rising costs of legal aid. The reasons for the growth in expenditure are complex, and require an integrated approach if they are to be tackled successfully. "A Fairer Deal for Legal Aid", which was launched in July 2005, sets out a strategic vision for how this can be achieved. While the reintroduction of means-testing has a key role to play in that regard, it is by no means the sole focus of the strategy. For example, major steps are being taken to address the budgetary concerns posed by very high-cost criminal cases. However, it is important to recognise that the savings that will flow from the Bill are significant, with at least £35 million of savings resulting from the implementation of means tests in magistrates courts alone. For that reason, it is right and proper that we continue to give proportionate emphasis to means-testing as a major element in the strategy.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said that the number of criminal practitioners—solicitors in particular—in his area was causing concern, and that sometimes only one solicitor would be available. We are aware of problems in certain rural areas, which are often less well provided for than urban areas. However, the Legal Services Commission is providing training grants to tackle that problem. In my experience, the number of students seeking to enter law school is continuing to rise considerably, and we need to ensure that a package is available to encourage those students to go into criminal representation.

Nick Ainger: The issue, however, is purely financial.— [Interruption.] If we are talking about eligibility, the issue is whether or not the individual qualifies for legal aid. That involves considering the individual's financial situation, and I reiterate that that is not a justification for the court—

Nick Ainger: I always try to be helpful to the hon. Gentleman, and I do not know whether he has read the supplement, which goes into considerable detail about the points to which he refers.—[Interruption.] All that I can say to him is that if there is such a complex issue, it is perfectly reasonable for it to be considered by judicial review. The concern, however, is that we will again tie up our courts with people appealing on their financial eligibility for legal aid. It is recognised by senior members of the judiciary that that is not a good use of court time.
	This Bill seeks to tackle a widely recognised and much criticised flaw in the legal aid system—that, on too many occasions, those clearly able to afford the cost of their own representation and perhaps convicted of some of the most repellent and socially corrosive crimes are receiving the benefit of taxpayer's money through the legal aid system. Cases such as that of Kenneth Noye and, more recently, El-Hadji Diouf, are mercifully rare but do no credit to an otherwise socially vital, well-conceived and accepted system.
	This is a common-sense measure that fits well with much of this Government's successful modernisation of the criminal justice system. It is based on the incontrovertible, broadly accepted principle that those who can afford to pay for the cost of their own defence should do so. It also makes significant progress towards ensuring that the modern legal aid system is sustainable and available for the protection of both current and future generations. It is, in short, a return to the founding principles of legal aid, and I am happy to commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.